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UFS hosts launch of Khoebo Innovation Promotion Programme

14 November 2024 | Story André Damons | Photo André Damons

Khoebo Innovation Promotion Programme launch 2024 — Staff members from the Directorate Research Development (DRD) at the University of the Free State; Palesa Mgaga, second from right, Tebogo Machethe, centre, and Charelise van Staden, second from right, were thanked for hosting the launch of the Khoebo Innovation Promotion Programme. They are pictured with colleagues from the IDC’s Samkelisiwe Mtsewu, left, and Thato Mogopodi, far right.

The University of the Free State (UFS), represented by the Directorate Research Development (DRD), played host to the Department of Trade Industry and Competition (dtic) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) for the launch of its Khoebo Innovation Promotion Programme (KIPP).

The launch took place on 5 November in the Sasol Library on the Bloemfontein Campus. Tebogo Machethe, Director: Research Contracts and Innovation at the DRD, said its role was to expose the university researchers to different opportunities and programmes for funding from the IDC and the dtic. It also allowed the researchers to engage potential funders in order to understand what funders look for in a project when considering funding it.

“The aim of IDC KIPP is to assist local entrepreneurs and small to medium enterprises with commercialisation funding. The KIPP offers capital and business support to SMMEs during the early stages of commercialisation with particular emphasis on township and rural entrepreneurs,” said Machethe.

Address uneven distribution of economic development

KIPP is a dtic programme but is managed by the IDC and aims to enable early-stage innovative SMEs to penetrate the market with their locally developed innovations, resulting in a more competitive economic environment and thereby facilitating economic growth in the economy.

According to Machethe, who welcomed the guests, participants and presenters to the launch, some of the funding is geared towards the development of university innovations. Though the focus was on the KIPP launch, he continued, the discussions also encompassed other forms of funding that are available and more geared towards the university innovation.

His address was centred around the university's Vision 130 and how it supports innovation and the entire innovation ecosystem, which seeks to shift the emphasis to research impact, embracing both knowledge and societal impact. Vision 130 identifies the need for a greater focus on collaborative research, research that can attract large-scale funding in niche areas where the university is seen as a national and global leader.

Samkelisiwe Mtsewu, KIPP Account Manager at the IDC, said the programme was introduced to address the uneven distribution of economic development across the country. She said with its capacity, the KIPP programme can contribute to addressing the uneven distribution of economic development.

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Death may come in adorable little packages

2015-03-23

The main host of the Lassa virus is the Natal Mulimammate mouse.

Photo: Supplied

Postdoctoral researcher, Abdon Atangana, of the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the university recently published an article online about the Lassa Haemorrhagic fever in the Natural Computing Applications Forum. In addition to the terminal transmissible sickness recognised as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, there is another strain called Lassa haemorrhagic fever.

The disease is classified under the arenaviridae virus family. The first outbreaks of the disease were observed in Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Central African Republic. However, it was first described in 1969 in the town of Lassa, in Borno State, Nigeria.

The main host of the Lassa virus is the Natal Mulimammate mouse, an animal indigenous to most of Sub-Saharan Africa. The contamination in humans characteristically takes place through exposure to animal excrement through the respiratory or gastrointestinal tracts.

Mouthfuls of air containing tiny particle of infective material are understood to be the most noteworthy way of exposure. It is also possible to acquire the infection through broken skin or mucous membranes that are directly exposed to the infective material.

“The aim of my research was to propose a novel mathematical equation used to describe the spread of the illness amongst pregnant women in West Africa. To achieve this, I used my newly-proposed derivative with fractional order called beta-derivative. Since none of the commonly used integral transform could be used to derive the solution of the proposed model, I proposed a new integral transform called Atangana-Transform, and used it, together with some iterative technique, to derive the solution of the model.

“My numerical simulations show that the disease is as deadly amongst pregnant women as Ebola,” Abdon said.

Abdon’s research was submitted to one of Springer’s top-tier journals with an impact factor 1.78. The paper was accepted and published February 2015.